


What's Mine Is Yours

by orphan_account



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Fluff and Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-17
Updated: 2017-07-21
Packaged: 2018-12-03 03:52:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11523975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: It’s killing me, Keith writes on the little yellow sticker, when you’re away.





	1. what belongs to shiro

Together out in the middle of the desert, Shiro and Keith found a shack. It was nothing special, the only noteworthy thing would be that it was made out of sturdy wood to still be standing up. Making it into their shack had been an accident; Shiro suggested they sleep there for the night and continue heading out in the morning.

On each trip across the country, they brought something to the shack with them. First, it was a pile of books Keith couldn’t keep in his room at Garrison. Then Shiro brought along a pair of old chairs for them to sit on at the shack. It was only momentary, they reassured the other, just for the nights they slept there.

The nights got cold; eventually, Keith carried a bigger comforter around his shoulders for them to sleep in. The mattress inside the shack was creaky and smelled something awful, so the two of them decided to buy a spare.

Their time spent in the desert shack went from ‘sometimes’ to just about every weekend. Neither Keith nor Shiro acknowledged this. At least, not aloud.

Keith still needed the books but he couldn’t be arsed to drag them back to the dorms _but_ he needed the notes for them. So Shiro put a nail in the wall to hang the cork board off of, where Keith could compile all of his notes and pages to eventually take back to the Garrison.

School utensils from both were scattered around the floor. At some point, it was evidently too much but neither of them wanted to try and get a table through the door, so they looted the shack’s basement. It was a surprise it _had_ a basement as well as a table. The table was somewhat shaky from age and poor care; Keith had Shiro grab the bricks and old books to prop the table upright.

One night, Keith remarked that coming to the shack was like coming home. Shiro hummed him to sleep that night.

After bringing the table upstairs, they kept their collection of extra school supplies at the shack. It was in the desert shack that Keith learned that Shiro color-coded his notes. Shiro, over Keith’s laughs, protested – said it was to make the work manageable, to quickly tell what the notes were for. He had left most of them back at the shack when he left for Kerberos.

Initially speaking, Keith avoided the hell out of the desert shack. So much of the things there were Shiro’s, not Keith’s. But then it became a matter of seeing Shiro, so return to the shack he did.

It became his hermit’s shell. When the Garrison became too much, Keith retreated to the desert shack. When something else stressed him out, Keith got out as soon as possible to go back to the desert shack. ( _It feels like coming home._ ) Quickly he ran out of excuses to come there – that was until he was expelled from the Garrison.

With nowhere else to go, and a permanent reason as to why, Keith stayed at the shack. It was dwindling out of Shiro each night he spent there. Of course, it was logically inevitable, Shiro was out there thousands of miles away from planet Earth spending every night in a spaceship, whereas Keith was down here in outskirts of Earth’s center spending every night in the shack. The spaceship was to become Shiro’s; the desert shack was to become Keith’s.

His things are still here, though. That much Keith can cherish.

He takes the regularly colored yellow stickers that don’t belong to Shiro. Shiro’s things are kept where they are until they begin to collect dust. From then on, Keith makes it a routine to clean the desert shack of dust, bugs, and anything else every fortnight. He buys his first thing for the shack as a vacuum cleaner. When not in use, it goes down to the basement.

The upstairs has Shiro’s name written all over it. The downstairs, Keith decides, is solely for Keith. He arranges everything, as the alien feeling of _his_ prickles over his skin, downstairs one day. Typically he spends the mornings in the basement in his wait for the sun to die out, then he runs upstairs once the cold of night invades.

Days go by. Keith becomes bored.

The lull of time passing digs through Keith’s brain. Keith describes it as a sound, like nails on chalkboard, whenever he notices the passage of time. It is so long and it scraps at him, tearing away at him bit by bit yet the pace never quickens. To say that life in the desert is quiet would be implying that there would be sound at all.

He is so removed from civilization. Shiro’s presence in the shack dies a little more each day. Keith’s sanity, he thinks, is about to run out as well.

Keith can’t recall what day it is he bursts out of the shack. The day he goes slightly mad, hops on the motorbike and runs across the desert, is lost to him. The shack calls him back, but there’s something else out there too. In space, you can’t stand still, Shiro hasn’t become static. To let his body turn into pins and needles would be to go against what is Shiro.

There are crags on the wayside of the desert. They are strange and different, not like coming home but like the pit stop to home. Some nights he camps out here, which becomes a past-Keith event when he once falls through the ground. As it turns out, the underground is full of old things, cravings and stories outlined on the walls.

It’s unsafe to stay there. What he can do is take notes at the shack, just like he used to.

Notes become more than just notes in an embarrassing amount of time. Soon, it’s about Keith’s thoughts, the things he sees outside or how the particular day’s temperature drove him mad. He tries to keep the other thoughts out because any day might be the day Shiro returns. Keith gives himself a year of waiting before he writes about, God Forbid, his feelings.

On the anniversary of Shiro’s so-called pilot error, Keith makes a neat stack of his yellow notes. The pen is exceptionally heavy today.

 _It’s killing me_ , Keith writes on the little yellow sticker, _when you’re away_. The tiny note goes up on the wall, placed next the stories of the cave, along with the records of temperature. He makes a duplicate purple one to go along with what he has of pre-Kerberos. That had been Shiro's work – Shiro was so excited for the mission. He was _so_ excited.

Keith thinks he might be sick. It was a dumbass thing to do. Keith repeats _it's killing me, it’s killing me when you’re away,_ in his head as he looks over the vastness that is _Shiro_. Keith chose not to stay still, leaving Shiro behind, for him to rot in the shack that was supposed to be his.

What had he done?


	2. what belongs to keith

To Shiro, the crash landing on Earth is entirely unremarkable. Even his travel back was… vague. For the most part, the journey Earth was relatively calm, despite Ulaz having sent him practically _barreling_ through space.

In his defense, it was a long trip. Prior to sending him off, Ulaz told him that in the best case scenario, Shiro would be out for days. During his initial reach for a water bottle in the pod, the ship shook with some form of turbulence. That or some stray meteor had thrown him off course… or said meteor had hit the spaceship… the possibilities were endless, and those endless possibilities kept Shiro from sleeping that first night.

He sat down for quite awhile after that in wait for his heart beat to settle and his eyelids to grow heavy. The continued bumps in the road spooked him and shook him from whatever comfort he had managed. Thankfully, Shiro is nothing if not adaptable.

The days were spent forgetting the past year; his memories instinctively tore themselves apart like rabid animals, eager to put it behind him and eager to forget. Who, more accurately _what_ , he had been molded into by the Galra – the undefeated warrior that was Champion – was almost completely forgotten in the gently rocking spaceship.

It became akin to a cradle. Shiro rested easily day in and day out in the shaking little tube-like ship.

Disregarding the vulgarity of how his mind didn’t just repress the memories ( initially it was as though the memories were pressed onto vinyl and some awful awful hand was there to always keep the record spinning, and spinning, and spinning) it became concerning when he forgot so much, Shiro started to struggle remembering _why_ he had been sent back.

Only through repetition did he remember; _Voltron, Voltron, Voltron._ His lips were dry and cracked when he came back; at least he remembered.

Then there was the whole... incident at the Garrison.

The short time he spent strapped down to a table left him as well – the reason why he forgot could have been blunt force trauma, his brain shutting itself down, any variation of the two or more. Shiro doesn’t know why he doesn’t remember, solely _because_ he doesn’t remember.

When it becomes evident to the others, or as Shiro first registers them those people in the desert shack, that Shiro has forgotten his anxious rambling to the Garrison doctors, it’s decided silently and collectively that no one should tell him.

The first and only day back on Earth starts off in the desert on a familiar mattress.

Unabashed sunlight is coming through the windows; the morning light illuminates the old wooden floors of the shack. The sunlight was _intense_ , it made the sight behind his eyelids so red Shiro stirred. He barely moves – his mind may have forgotten, but his body remembers. Moving quickly when waking up would have _them_ believe you were battle-ready.

Though with a pause, Shiro realizes cannot remember who _they_ are. Nevertheless, he keeps it in mind that he has to be wary.

His eyes crack open a little more with each second and when the coast seems to be clear, Shiro blinks.

There, to his immediate left, stands Keith, who is aimlessly messing with something his hands. The corkboard remains though it is covered. From what he _can_ see both of their sections are now plastered in photos and little notes. Slowly, _oh so slowly_ , Shiro shuts his eyes and adjusts his breathing pattern into that of a sleeping person.

Oh God, he’s back.

He’s back on Earth. He is not sure how, but somehow, he’s back home. Here on Earth – Earth, where Keith is safe and sound, where there is Keith who is looking only _slightly_ more tired from when Shiro left him for Kerberos. Something like heartstrings twinges in his chest, plucked by the mere sight of Keith.

Even after all this time, although Shiro doesn’t know exactly how long he’s been gone, Keith is still okay, he is alive.

Against his own wishes, Shiro continues to feign sleep. There is a sense of _inability_ , here. The senses of Earth swarmed him on his eyes opening; the dizzying rush he felt from the sight of the blazing sun, the smell of hot desert sand, the feeling of cheap scratchy blankets both beneath and above him.

Space is far away from him now. Space has been ripped out of him like a band-aid from the skin. Yet it was more than just a cut Shiro bled from. What happened in space felt around in the man’s bones and readjusted them, played around with his head and its wires and changed the way he felt naturally.

Earth was new all over again. Meeting Keith for the second time so soon would wreck havoc on his heart and mind. Shiro keeps his breathing careful and light, taking the down time to listen hard to his surroundings. There’s more than just Keith here, he realizes, what with the footsteps sounding around the shack. When he dares a peak, he sees a group made up of strangers. The smallest has a striking resemblance to Matthew Holt, so much so that it makes his insides shake uncomfortably and Shiro shuts his eyes on the prospect he doesn’t want to be sick _already_.

Soon enough, the new people spread out in the shack, presumably to the basement from sound alone. From what he can tell, Keith is standing at his bedside for a few minutes before he joins them. It’s Shiro’s opportunity to sneak out for a moment of self-reflection. It’s definitely one that he takes.

High above the ground is that blazing sun; it is shadowed over by clouds that makes for an unusually cold morning. The clouds that hide the angry sun roll over themselves like they’re about to thunder, like the desert will have some rain before years of drought. He has seen this sight before, he has been here before.

( It was during one of their trips, he thinks with a start. Keith and Shiro in the desert shack, getting ready to leave in the morning. But the sky was lined with clouds and those clouds looked fit to burst and drown the whole desert out.

It didn’t, though. The pressure was immense but not a single drop fell from the sky. )

He _has_ seen this sight before, he has been here before.

Yet… it sure doesn’t feel that way.

Logically, when you know that the universe continues to expand at every second of the day, the feeling that you haven’t been somewhere before where you have been is normal. Though he’s firmly implanted his feet into the dry sand, Shiro will never stand in this exact space in the universe again. His stomach settles somewhat with that; he has not come to back to Earth like an alien, it’s just that Earth has changed in his absence.

A cautious hand on his shoulder shakes him out of it. There’s a jolt that leads to a spike of heat in… in his new hand, the one he brought back to this planet; it flares alive at the sensation but the new hand belongs to no one other than Keith. Up close, it’s clear that Keith is so unbelievably tired despite what Shiro saw earlier, he is so worn out, and Keith is _very very glad_ to see Shiro.

“It’s good to have you back,” Keith says and the heat in his prosthetic _melts_.

Oh, Shiro is back on Earth. It’s like Keith – from a single, single sentence and touch, lord – launched a grappling hook at anything Shiro and in a miracle he managed to snag his human wrist. It’d be in typical Keith fashion for him do something like that; tether onto what is Shiro instead of what came back from the sky. From something so frustratingly small, Shiro slams back into reality – not for the first time, but finally, the unfamiliarity of Earth falls into a comfortable background.

Shiro is unsure; he tries to believe it’s with a smile when he says, “It’s good to be back.”

Keith’s eyebrows are furrowed in concern when he talks, there’s a pout on his face, it’s the pout he does when he is serious. ( The remaining weightlessness Shiro feels is dragged all the way back down to Earth when it’s Keith speaking to him. ) Much to Keith’s chagrin, the softness of his facial features makes him seem more whiny than genuinely upset. Shiro knows better than to judge Keith on this; hell, Shiro knows Keith better than anyone.

A bit reluctantly, Keith tells Shiro that last night, he and his odd rocketship landed in the desert here. It’s an expanse of absolute nothing besides open ground for miles and miles; perfectly sensible for Shiro to crash land here.

( Privately Shiro suspects that this may be too good to be true. Like it’s destiny at work, the hands of fate dragged him back down his beginning and his end, bringing him back to Keith. If that is the case, with destiny pairing him up with Keith, Shiro admits that he can hardly complain. )

The rubble of the ship is nowhere to be seen. Almost immediately, as if he’s expecting it like a follow-up question, Keith explains to him that the ship caught fire upon impact and he and the other people in the shack dragged Shiro out. Thanks to the raw scorch from the fire and the sweltering heat of the desert, there are no remains. Apparently, Shiro rambled on about aliens which, now, he wants to explain.

He startles himself with the realization that he really can’t.

Eventually, Shiro is tugged back into their desert shack by Keith’s anxious pulling on his jacket. It feels like his heart is slamming in his head or his brain’s gained a few pounds and has started to claw at the walls of his skull.

Frankly, it’s a headache. A headache from his brain trying to readjust from being in space for ages to going back to where Keith is, yes, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t annoying. Unfortunately, neither of them ever considered keeping medicine, Keith practically kept his _soul_ in the shack but god forbid either of them sneak a Garrison first aid kit inside.

A pleasant surprise when he sees Keith has smuggled one in. It’s viciously outweighed by what he sees he sees a moment later. Writing.

It’s on one of the things peeking out of the white cover. Upon inspection, it’s a yellow note with unbelievably scribbled writing, tiny so Shiro _has_ to get close to read it. The strangers in the room are pointedly ignoring the moment Shiro and Keith have got going on right now where Shiro’s investigating his room and Keith is trying to pull him back from the ears to stop him.

Not that Keith had much time to pick a fight, as it takes him a second too late to realize what it is that Shiro’s staring at.

Shiro briefly wonders why Keith has suddenly got all up in arms about his things and maybe he should respect that even though it’s kind of silly to keep something personal up just as he registers what the note says.

He throws his head back to look at Keith so fast it gives him whiplash. _It’s killing me when you’re away?_ Keith isn’t really looking at him or anyone for that matter and Shiro doesn’t want to say anything in front of anyone but –

“Later,” Keith breathes more than says and _fuuuuuuuck_. This is clearly not what Keith wanted to show him. “Later, okay? Not right now.”

“Okay then,” he agrees on the basis that there are strangers here, strangers who Shiro doesn’t want to expose Keith to. “Let’s just.”

Keith doesn’t quite wait for Shiro’s permission, looking totally happy with hurrying to the corkboard. The cover is still there and Shiro sees why he tried to cover the board up now. There’s much more underneath – more photos than the sides that poke out of the edges of the white sheet, more post-it notes than the yellow one and it takes him back about _how_.

How much Keith is here. Of course, he’s here physically but what he’s standing in front of screams the guy’s name, if there’s anything on there that belongs to Shiro it’s been shadowed over by everything Keith’s added. It, sort of reminds him of the time that he said their visits to the shack were like coming home and Shiro thought it was because it was their space but oh.

 _This_ is Keith’s. He is very much not right where Shiro left him. Sure, Keith kept moving as to keep firing that hook at Shiro, but he hasn’t stayed in place.

Whether it’s Keith in some new hobby he picked up or what he’s been putting his time into, Shiro knows that he isn’t certain, but he’s simultaneously hurt and proud. There’s a trace of wonderment, too, because everything lines up with one another, Keith’s even moved Shiro’s star map over here and placed constellations around it, clearly Keith’s put a lot of dedication into it –

It’s color coded.

He may not understand it, whatever this is because this is clearly not just for tracking Shiro down, there’s a sense that things don’t stay put but Keith treats him all the same. Not only that, but over time Keith has implemented some of his wisdom.

He decides not to voice _any of that_ and Shiro honestly might lose it if he brings up the color thing. “ _What_ have you been working on?”

There is a hint of a smile when Keith stares to explain, his eyes wide and bright. Bringing up the Garrison and – he got _what_ – ends all that, as if he’s remembered that it’s not just the two of them anymore. Shiro, for one, can hardly blame him.

**Author's Note:**

> [Blame Sunny.](http://kcgane.tumblr.com/post/163071671616/so-weve-had-an-interesting-evening-full-of-some)
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> Comments, critique, and kudos are always appreciated.


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